Ryan Nussbaum is a recent graduate of the design program at Washington University in St. Louis, and he created this infographic poster mapping out the murders of Jack the Ripper.

In this exhibition panel, I mapped the possible escape routes of a chief suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders. Upon closer examination, one can see the different types of wounds and removed organs of each of the victims. The piece is meant to dispel the notion that the murders were random occurrences.

As part of the BBC launching thier new show called The Truth About Crime, they have launched a new "Crime Map" website that uses heatmaps to show real crime data for Oxford, England. The heatmaps are visual representations of all the crime data available for the 12-month period from November 2007 to November 2008.

The website is designed to allow users to explore crime patterns, discover more about potential risks and take action to prevent crime. The site features a specifically commissioned crime map of Oxford created with data supplied by the city's emergency services.

Why are you using heatmaps?

There are a number of methods for mapping crime. Currently, the technique most often used is to map crime data according to geographic areas such as postcodes, census output areas or police 'beat-codes'. The geographic areas chosen to map crime data – such as 'beat-codes' by the police – are often done so because these services deploy their resources according to their chosen geographical areas.

However, as these geographical areas vary greatly in size, when crime data is plotted on a map it is often difficult for a member of the general public to properly see and understand which areas have high or low crime rates. A large area may seem to have more crime than a small area even though this is simply because there is more space and people in that area. A small area with high crime might be hard to spot because it is simply physically smaller on the map, and therefore harder to see.

After extensive consultation with a host of experts in this specialist area, we have decided to use 'heatmaps' to display our crime data, since these offer a clear way for us all to see patterns of crime, without requiring us to have the expert knowledge of crime data analysts, nor a prior knowledge of arbitrary geographical areas. These 'heatmaps' represent the relative amount of crime according to a sliding scale of colour (as detailed in the "Key"), and provide a sense of the area where a type of crime is happening without disclosing the exact location that it took place – so as to protect the anonymity of victims

Heat maps such as these have not previously been used to any great extent in the UK, but have been used in the USA and Canada.

A number of different maps are available showing Crime Patterns Over Time, Burglary & Theft, Violent Crime, Anti-Social Behavior and the ability to compare to your own neighborhood (if you live in the U.K.)

The U.S. imports 60% of its oil requirements, and this infographic map shows the top 10 countries that are sending us their oil. I think it will actually be quite surprising to most Americans how little is imported from the Middle East.

As much as 66 percent of all US crude oil is imported from other countries, and the amount of oil imported from OPEC nations is roughly equal to the amount of oil produced domestically. Petroleum, natural gas and coal are the primary sources of energy consumed in the United States because they are the most energy rich resources available. So far, renewables have only been capable of providing a small portion of total energy consumption, and their contribution to energy consumption has remained limited over the last two decades. However, with increasing government and private focus on green energy sources, renewables are likely to go from strength to strength in the near future.

HealthMap.org is an online map tool that locates any reports of disease from a selection of news sources. Available in multiple languages, HealthMap is a great use of the Google Maps API. In fact, HealthMap is funded by Google, which explains why they are so dependent on the Google Maps data.

HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health. This freely available Web site integrates outbreak data of varying reliability, ranging from news sources (such as Google News) to curated personal accounts (such as ProMED) to validated official alerts (such as World Health Organization). Through an automated text processing system, the data is aggregated by disease and displayed by location for user-friendly access to the original alert. HealthMap provides a jumping-off point for real-time information on emerging infectious diseases and has particular interest for public health officials and international travelers.

They also recently launched an iPhone app called Outbreaks Near Me, available for free in the iTunes app store. The app allows you to view the maps from your iPhone and get alerts for outbreaks in your area.

From LandArtGenerator.org, a world map visualizing the surface area required to power the world's electricity requirements using solar power alone in 2030, using current solar panel technology. It's getting a lot of traffic on digg, reddit and Twitter too.

Mike uses the data of the Great American Beer Festival medal winners from 1987-2008, and this year he has added some new infographics to help support the map. If you live in Oklahoma or North Dakota, I hope you're drinking out-of-state beer! I'm just saying.

Good infographic from the New Scientist showing how many years we have left of our key natural resources. Essentially these are basic bar and pie charts, but dressed up to make the overall graphic more compelling. The message is still clear though, and the author gets his point across very strongly.

This comes from a 2007 article in the New Scientist called "Earth's Natural Wealth: an Audit" that include two more infographics as well. The first is a map of where in the world are these natural resources are.

The next is a bubble graphic showing the scale of how much of each resource an average American will consume during their lifetime.

The Source listed on the first infographic: Armin Reller, University of Augsburg, Tom Graedel, Yale University